Part 18 (2/2)
The shepherd glowed with hospitality.
”Yonder is good water and I have tortillas and frijoles.”
Unshaven and dirty, gaunt from lack of sleep, the three men dismounted wearily and gladly turned their coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap.
”He will not try to cover his trail carefully now,” he said, swallowing huge slabs of bacon. ”He has a good start. You will have to fool him.
He sleeps by day and travels by night, you will see. You are working too hard and your horses will be dead. You should have slept last night. Now you will lose today because you must rest your horses.”
Porter looked at his two companions. Jack was doing fairly well, but the calm that DeWitt had found with Rhoda's scarf had deserted him. He was eating scarcely anything and stared impatiently at the fire, waiting for the start.
”I'm a blamed double-action jacka.s.s, with a peanut for a mind!”
exclaimed Porter. ”Taking on myself to lead this hunt when I don't _sabe_ frijoles! We take a sleep now.”
DeWitt jumped to his feet, expostulating, but Jack and Billy laid a hand on either of his shoulders and forced him to lie down on his blanket. There nature claimed her own and in a short time the poor fellow was in the slumber of exhaustion.
”Poor old chap!” said Jack as he spread his own blanket. ”I can't help thinking all the time 'What if it were Katherine!' Dear old Rhoda!
Why, Billy, we used to play together as kids! She's slapped my face, many a time!”
”Probably you deserved it!” answered Billy in an uncertain voice. ”By the limping piper! I'm glad I ain't her financier. I'm most crazy, as it is!”
The sheep herder woke the sleepers at noon. After a bath at the spring, and dinner, the trio felt as if reborn. They left the herder with minute directions as to what he was to do in case he heard of Rhoda. Then they rode out of the canon into the burning desert.
And now for several days they lost all clues. They beat up and down the ranges like tired hunting-dogs, all their efforts fruitless.
Little by little, panic and excitement left them. Even DeWitt realized that the hunt was to be a long and serious one as Porter told of the fearful chases the Apaches had led the whites, time and again. He began to realize that to keep alive in the terrible region through which the hunt was set he must help the others to conserve their own and his energies. To this end they ate and slept as regularly as they could.
Occasionally they met other parties of searchers, but this was only when they beat to the eastward toward the ranch, for most of the searchers were now convinced that Kut-le had made toward Mexico and they were patrolling the border. But Billy insisted that Kut-le was making for some eerie that he knew and would ensconce himself there for months, if need be, till the search was given up. Then and then only would he make for Mexico. And John DeWitt and Jack had come to agree with Billy.
”He'll keep her up in some haunt of his,” said Jack, again and again, ”until he's worn her into consenting to marry him. And before that happens, if I know old Rhoda, we'll find them.”
”He's mine when we do find him, remember that,” John DeWitt always said through his teeth at this point in the discussion.
It was on the twelfth day of the hunt that the sheep-herder found them.
They were cinching up the packs after the noon rest when he rode up on a burro. He was dust-coated and both he and the burro were panting.
”I've seen her! I've seen the senorita!” he shouted as he clambered stiffly from the burro.
The three Americans stood rigid.
”Where? How? When?” came from three heat-cracked mouths.
The Mexican started to answer, but his throat was raw with alkali dust and his voice was scarcely audible. DeWitt impatiently thrust a canteen into the little fellow's hands.
”Hurry, for heaven's sake!” he urged.
The Mexican took a deep draught.
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